Championship weekend

It was a couple of busy, long days on Friday and Saturday as I traveled to Denver to cover the state high school wrestling tournament.  The two high schools that I cover were sending a total of five wrestlers to compete.  Four of them had won their first round matches on Thursday, but when I arrived on Friday morning to cover the quarterfinal round, two of them lost and would go into the consolation bracket, but two did advance to the semifinals.  So I had four wrestlers I would be keeping track of.

This was home for my two days at the Pepsi Center:

So after shooting the quarterfinals in the morning, I had to shoot the beginning of the consolation round in the afternoon and the semifinals in the evening.  While I was waiting for one of the matches I needed to shoot, instead of going back to back to my spot on press row, I decided to practice a little on another match and was able to get this image:

Shane Whitmore of Burlington, left, tries to push away Adam Ortivez of LaVeta during
their 130-pound quarterfinal match at the 2A Colorado State High School Wrestling
Tournament on Friday at the Pepsi Center in Denver.

On Friday evening the two Middle Park wrestlers in the consolation round won, West Grand's Chase Hill lost his championship semifinal putting him into the consolation bracket, and Middle Park's Brian Macchione won his semifinal to advance to Saturday night's championship.

On Saturday morning the two Middle Park wrestlers in the consolation round lost, so their tournament was over.  Chase Hill, the lone West Grand wrestler still alive, lost his consolation semifinal match, but would wrestle for fifth place--assuring himself a spot on the podium.

I then snuck over to the Colorado Press Association awards (see the results of that below) and while I was gone, Hill lost the fifth place match to take sixth.

With only one wrestler in the finals to worry about, I shot a few of the other championship matches to stay sharp while sitting on the hard floor of the Pepsi Center and this was probably my favorite image:

Kurtis Romero of LaJunta and Darin Sisnerso of Alamosa get tangled up
in the 3A 112-pound championship match at the Colorado State High
School Wrestling Tournament on Saturday at the Pepsi Center in Denver.

Middle Park junior Brian Macchione made it to the 189-pound final in 3A, which he would go on to win.  Here are three of my favorites:

Middle Park's Brian Macchione, top, controls Mario Garcia of Dolores Huerta during the
3A 189-pound championship match at the Colorado High School State Wrestling
Tournament on Saturday night at the Pepsi Center in Denver.

Middle Park coaches Cal Cherrington, left, and Cody Arnold celebrate as
Brian Macchione wins the class 3A 189-pound championship at
 the Colorado High School State Wrestling Tournament on Saturday
night at the Pepsi Center in Denver.

Middle Park's Brian Macchione celebrates after winning the class 3A 189-pound
title at the Colorado High School State Wrestling Tournament on Saturday
 night at the Pepsi Center in Denver.

I guess I should add that I won my own state championship, of sorts, while in Denver.  The Colorado Press Association held its annual convention and announced the winners in its annual contest on Saturday.  I was fortunate enough to win two firsts (news and sports) and a second (feature) in the photography portion of the contest.  The reporters I work with also brought home several awards and our paper won the Editorial Excellence Award, which was a nice way to follow up on the Photo and Design Excellence Award we won last year.

Here are my winning photos:

First place news

Members of Grand County Emergency Medical Services, the East Grand Fire
Department and Grand Park Community Recreation Center staff treat simulated
patients during training exercises in the foam pit at the recreation center in Fraser.

First place sports

West Grand's Brook Cecil hits past the Paonia block during a game in Kremmling. The
Lady Mustangs went on to win the match in four sets, 25-19, (22-25), 26-24, 25-22.

Second place feature

Rudy Garcia, right, assists with the bean bag toss during kid's games put on by the
KremmlingVolunteer Fire Department as part of Kremmling Days festivities.

goo, goo g'joob

A couple of recent favorites

Here are two of my favorite images from the weekend.  I had a friend leave me a message a few weeks ago about the "tubing hill war" that is going on in Fraser.  The Fraser Tubing Hill has been around for years and two years ago the Colorado Adventure Park opened right next door with its own tubing operation.

You have to go up the hill and to the left to get to the Fraser Tubing Hill, or turn to the right to get to the Colorado Adventure Park.  There had been some signage installed to help direct traffic, but not all was kosher with the county.  Apparently both operations have recently started utilizing people holding signs to attract customers, much like you see in Denver.  So on Saturday I went by to see what exactly was going on.  Here is what I found:

Later that day I headed to Kremmling to cover two high school basketball games.  The West Grand boys have been on somewhat of a roll lately.  A couple of weeks ago they defeated the eighth-ranked team in the state.  Saturday they were facing Hayden, ninth-ranked and a team they hadn't beaten in recent memory, even when the players were in middle school.  It was also the last regular season game for the West Grand seniors.  They had a look about them that said today was going to be different from all of the other meetings between the two schools.

And it was.  It was close throughout, but West Grand found themselves down by 8 points at the start of the fourth quarter and with 25 seconds to go, they were still down by 2.  They ran time off the clock and then junior Travis Gore drove to the basket, made the shot and was fouled.  The image that follows is Travis being hugged by his teammates, prior to him making the free throw to give them a one-point lead with 3 seconds left.  Hayden was unable to score.  Another exciting win for West Grand.

goo, goo g'joob